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Amazon ditches 'just walk out' checkouts at its grocery stores

gizmodo.com

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Re: Amazon ditches 'just walk out' checkouts at its grocery stores

#371

Post by i_am_jl »

bombcar wrote: post #248
Johnny555 wrote: post #239

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Lots of services would be phenomenal when you can offload much of the cost to run them to cheap offshore labor. Remember how great Uber and Doordash were when much of the cost of operating was offset by underpaid workers and VC funds? Now that they don't have unlimited piles of money and cities/states are making them pay more fair wages, the cost-benefit of those services has diminished. I was ok paying $5 for $20 of…

I wish it could all be managed intelligently; I'm hungry but I can wait, let orders collect and make them all at once or something. Dominos had this down pat twenty years ago, how come everything with an app is so much more expensive?

>Dominos had this down pat twenty years ago, how come everything with an app is so much more expensive?

The people making the app need a much bigger cut than Domino's. Domino's cut only needs to be big enough to pay their delivery drivers, they make their money selling pizza and the delivery is just an additional service that drives business.

The app maker needs a cut big enough to pay their delivery driver and also be the main revenue stream for their entire business since they're not making money off the pizza.

Re: Amazon ditches 'just walk out' checkouts at its grocery stores

#372

Post by dpkirchner »

User23 wrote: post #332
hn_user82179 wrote: post #226

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Regular grocery stores have really gone downhill as well. Whenever I shop, there’s at most 1 cashier doing checkout and usually 0 (only self-checkout being open). I consider myself pretty proficient about knowing what sets off the machine but still set it off 60% of the time (about some weight imbalance etc) that requires an attendant to come fix manually. I’ve gotten to dread the grocery store trips as they require…

There is one grocery store near me that always has at least two staff members ready to work the checkout and no self checkout at all. There are virtually never lines more than two persons deep. The only time I ever go anywhere else is when I absolutely have to. Vote with your wallet.

Two of the main grocery stores in my area, one of which has sufficient cashiers, are trying to merge in order to make a worse shopping experience for everyone -- at least I assume that's the goal. The third, the only real alternative, is Walmart. Sucks.

Re: Amazon ditches 'just walk out' checkouts at its grocery stores

#373

Post by sunshowers »

omgwtfbyobbq wrote: post #369
Timshel wrote: post #311

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Well Amazon did not think so: > Amazon’s internal goals of reaching less than 50 reviews per 1,000 sales.

They didn't even agree with the 700 out of 1000 trips needing review figure > According to The Information, 700 out of 1,000 Just Walk Out sales required human reviewers as of 2022. This widely missed Amazon’s internal goals of reaching less than 50 reviews per 1,000 sales. Amazon called this characterization inaccurate, and disputes how many purchases require reviews. Even if the system was fairly accurate, if the v…

"inaccurate" can mean lots of things here, from "actually it was 690 out of 1000" to some other minor technicality. Note that Amazon did not provide a figure of its own.

Large corporations tend to tell the truth, but push it as far as they can.

Re: Amazon ditches 'just walk out' checkouts at its grocery stores

#374

Post by kiwijamo »

FourOnTheFloor wrote: post #358
saalweachter wrote: post #233

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yeah, the "if anything goes wrong you now stand around with your thumb up your ass while one employee makes their way from broken kiosk to broken kiosk to manually resolve the problems" model has soured me on self-checkout. I find I have a very low "dealing with this bullshit" limit, to the point that if I have trouble I'm likely to just say fuck it and walk out of the store without completing my purchase.

And it almost always DOES go wrong. Seriously 75% of the time when I'm done scanning and I press "pay now," it inexplicably says "calling for assistance" and refuses to do anything until an employee comes over. WHY? And now assholes are intentionally taking alcohol through the self-checkout, deliberately taking up that one employee's time making him or her perform the workaround to check the items out. And the 20+ ye…

Strangely that issue has almost vasnished for me in the last couple of years, here in New Zealand at least across the several supermarket chains I frequent (although they all seem to use the same self service POS supplier). Sure it was a big issue when these first came into stores but I think they've realised they need to increase the tolerances a bit (e.g. accept even if the weight is <1% off) and it all just works close to 100% of the time for me. I do however generally avoid adding bags to the weight area (as I've found these to trigger false warnings) and just load my shopping directly onto the weighted area and then once I've paid I'll just bag my shopping then. Works like a charm.

Re: Amazon ditches 'just walk out' checkouts at its grocery stores

#375

Post by geodel »

bombcar wrote: post #248
Johnny555 wrote: post #239

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Lots of services would be phenomenal when you can offload much of the cost to run them to cheap offshore labor. Remember how great Uber and Doordash were when much of the cost of operating was offset by underpaid workers and VC funds? Now that they don't have unlimited piles of money and cities/states are making them pay more fair wages, the cost-benefit of those services has diminished. I was ok paying $5 for $20 of…

I wish it could all be managed intelligently; I'm hungry but I can wait, let orders collect and make them all at once or something. Dominos had this down pat twenty years ago, how come everything with an app is so much more expensive?

> how come everything with an app is so much more expensive?

After ton of investment investors are finally looking for returns now. And consumers have decided convenience reigns supreme. Right from the SAAS products to daily breakfast customers there is lot of premium on convenience.

Re: Amazon ditches 'just walk out' checkouts at its grocery stores

#376

Post by Terr_ »

geodel wrote: post #375
bombcar wrote: post #248

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I wish it could all be managed intelligently; I'm hungry but I can wait, let orders collect and make them all at once or something. Dominos had this down pat twenty years ago, how come everything with an app is so much more expensive?

> how come everything with an app is so much more expensive? After ton of investment investors are finally looking for returns now. And consumers have decided convenience reigns supreme. Right from the SAAS products to daily breakfast customers there is lot of premium on convenience.

> After ton of investment investors are finally looking for returns now.

We need a quippy phrase for this, but unfortunately "Pump and Dump" is already taken for a kind of stock-market manipulation.

Instead, I would like to coin/nominate "Tease and Squeeze".

First consumers are teased by the idea that the disruptive new service has invented a magic new secret to low prices and great value... But after the company as achieved some kind of market strangehold, those consumers are squeezed with price-hikes and quality-drops as the investors--who bankrolled the early predatory pricing [0]--try to recoup their investment plus additional profit.

[0] Note that the term "Predatory Pricing" usually refers to artificially low prices to destroy competitors, although I can totally understand why some may assume it means preying on customers with high prices.

Re: Amazon ditches 'just walk out' checkouts at its grocery stores

#377

Post by justinjlynn »

KptMarchewa wrote: post #357
MrFoof wrote: post #335

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is like learning that there actually 1000 tiny elves inside of your television drawing the pictures. This a real-life, genuine Flintstones-esque cartoon gag.

Pratchett comes to mind.

Pratchett really got technology, imo. Sometimes it really is high energy magic, but most of the time it's just labourers you can't see being exploited. I especially enjoyed the line "money dangled is far more effective than money given" or something like that... it's true.

Re: Amazon ditches 'just walk out' checkouts at its grocery stores

#378

Post by unscaled »

bilalq wrote: post #240
alden5 wrote: post #217

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What never made sense to me with their go stores was why a store that only needed 1-2 people max to operate had such bad hours. Hearing now that getting the bill is a mainly manual process i guess their hours had to line up with their data entry team in india so people could get their recipes quickly. insane to think about

It's not manual. This is a case of mistaken journalism. The labeling is for training data of the models. Before covid, the hours were much better too.

If my memory serves me right, when I last visited the US right before COVID (SF) I wanted to see an Amazon Go convenience store but it closed down at 16:00 or 17:00.

That was quite unacceptable for a convenience store and it was then I got the feeling Amazon Go was still an experiment rather than a mature technology.

Re: Amazon ditches 'just walk out' checkouts at its grocery stores

#379

Post by AdamJacobMuller »

noodlesUK wrote: post #6

I think that the scan-as-you-shop style systems are definitely the next realistic step for grocery stores. I really like using them, as they allow me to put stuff directly into my bags as I go. I think a further improvement on a system like that would be to use the cheap RFID tech (UHF EPC) so that when you walk through the anti-theft barriers, the system knows exactly what you got, and then there's no need to scan a…

I use this regularly at the local stop & shop -- it's been in place for easily 10 years.

You scan your loyalty card (in my case a picture of it on my phone) and it releases a wireless barcode scanner with an android touchscreen phone-like thing in it.

Walk around the store, scan things and put them directly in my bags.

My favorite part is checking out without scanning anything and getting bemused looks (and occasional challenges) from other customers -- sometimes even from store staff.

Definitely saves time in my opinion over any other option. I only need to touch things twice vs 3 or 4 times and the wireless barcode scanner is much more reliable than the cacophony of things yelling at me with the self checkout. Weights don't always match, vision sensors think i'm doing the wrong thing.

Re: Amazon ditches 'just walk out' checkouts at its grocery stores

#380

Post by giantg2 »

seabass-labrax wrote: post #211
giantg2 wrote: post #155

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yeah, the author is trying to see what would happen if they roll a can into the bag. This is meant to conceal the act from the computer. The act of concealing merchandise is all that is required in many jurisdictions. If they walked out without the concealing act, then I would think the error should be on the store. There have been some cases of self checkout prosecution too. They don't need any proof of intent. Even…

> They don't need any proof of intent. Even regular errors can be prosecuted. In Common Law jurisdictions, there's no intent required for prosecution of alleged theft, but there absolutely is intent required for conviction ! Anything else is a miscarriage of justice.

Except statute and common law can define intent using prima facia definitions. In PA it's considered prima facia evidence as defined in statute that you're hunting if you're walking in the woods with a gun. Doesn't matter your true intent. If you removed an item from a store without paying for it, that's prima facia evidence of shoplifting defined in common law. Again, true intent doesn't matter. The courts will even create president that goes against statute just to make conviction easier - the statute for dog control says it must be "under reasonable control". Instead the courts have ruled that it is a strict liability offense and not subject to the reasonable standard.

So yeah, there's a lot of miscarriage of justice, or at least potential for it. Nobody really cares until it happens to them.

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